Korg USA chooses Exchange Email for peace of mind

Background

Korg began with an idea: use the latest technologies to create the finest electronic musical instruments and allow musicians to sound their very best. Since 1963, that has remained the company’s passion. Along the way, Korg has earned a reputation of technological leadership, ease-of-use and stunning sound. The company set out to create an organ and came up with Japan’s first synthesizer. Innovation is in the company’s DNA. They are a company of musicians and music enthusiasts that sees themselves as your musical partner and the musical partner of hundreds of well-known, chart-topping musicians. Korg USA is the national distributor of a family of products, including Korg, VOX, Blackstar, Lâg and HK Audio. They love great sounds, they love a good interface and they love music.

Company Profile:Grammy winners and musicians globally use Korg’s family of products from keyboards to amps to entertain millions.

Industry: Music

Headquarters: Melville, New York

Intermedia’s customer since: 2010

The Challenge

In 2010, Korg USA was running their email via on-premises Exchange 2003 servers that were quickly nearing the end of their lifespan. “Our servers were due for replacement, simply because of their age,” says Joe Roy, network engineer, Korg USA. “We were running two servers with synchronization software for redundancy. When we looked at the cost of upgrading the hardware and software, plus the Exchange server cost, it was an easy decision to migrate to a hosted provider.”

The team at Korg did a thorough due diligence review, looking at Microsoft themselves as well as other Exchange providers. “Intermedia kept coming up as the leader in the hosted Exchange space,” says Roy. “At the time, Microsoft was just really getting their hosted solutions off the ground. Intermedia provided features that Microsoft did not have. Some of those included public folder support, Active Directory synchronization and a larger mailbox size per user. Cost, of course, was also a factor. Intermedia was the only vendor implementing Exchange 2010 at its launch, so we were looking forward to taking advantage of the new features.”

Upgrading to on-premises Exchange 2010 was too costly

Needed AD sync, public folders and larger mailboxes

Needed to support mobile devices

The Solution

Korg decided to move from the on-premises servers to Intermedia’s cloud services. They migrated nearly 150 users to Intermedia’s Exchange Email 2010. Korg also uses Intermedia’s public folders, active directory, ActiveSync mobility for android, Apple and windows phones, hosted BlackBerry for BlackBerry mobility, SharePoint for document management, and Lync for secure instant messaging. “Now that we have a hosted solution we have peace of mind. If something were to happen to our building, whether water damage or a fire, we know our critical business communications are intact. Our clients would still have the ability communicate with us and we would have the ability to communicate with one another,” says Roy.

SharePoint is a powerful platform for building shared document repositories, corporate Intranets, and project-specific web sites. With Intermedia, there is no hardware or software to manage. Your SharePoint portal is accessible virtually anytime and virtually anywhere through a web browser.

The Results

With the upgrade to Exchange 2010 Korg now has more features and capabilities than they had with the on-premises Exchange 2003 server. “We’ve been able to boost our productivity by offering a consistent inbox, calendaring and contacts experience across the PC, browser and mobile phone. We now have Outlook Web App which comes with conversation view, nickname cache and shared calendar and contacts, to name a few features,” says Roy. Managing a network of retailers across the globe means communications are vital. Korg USA can communicate with each other effectively regardless of where they are ensuring that the music keeps playing.

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